There's always a lot of pressure on an ending to a long series. There's almost no way to make it work. PeopThis is the end of the Irredeemable series.

There's always a lot of pressure on an ending to a long series. There's almost no way to make it work. People always cart out that old line about pleasing all the people all the time, but I honestly think that in ending a series it's pretty hard to really please ANYONE.

I've enjoyed the hell out of this series. It had its ups and downs, but ultimately I liked a good deal of the characters, felt like it went interesting and different places, and that it really did a nice job with the premise, which was that of a Superman-esque character who flips out emotionally and decides to basically destroy everything.

In the last 2 volumes we really get some great resolution with most of the main characters. There are very few who will go on unchanged, if at all, which to me signals that we just read a good story. We also get just enough of the back story near the end that we've been waiting for. So the ending also delivers in terms of letting us see the solving of most of the mysteries.

All-in-all, I have no real complaints about the ending, which sounds like small praise but is actually pretty big. These things are really easy to pick apart, and I don't really have much that I could see being different.

Also, I can see myself in the future using this series of a good example of why a limited series works. You can do whatever you want with it. People can die. The whole world can change, in fact, because you don't have to be constantly worrying about how you're going to return everything to status quo. If you write a story about the Joker, you always have to keep his inevitable return in the back of your mind. If you kill Superman, you have to do it in such a way that allows for his return and for him to overcome whatever killed him in the first place.

A limited series feels more like real life. Where things change for better or worse and we're left to deal with the actual consequences....more

I don't really know how to rate this. Not because it's a bad book. It's a really good book. It feels weird to rate it.

It's kind of like this: My brotI don't really know how to rate this. Not because it's a bad book. It's a really good book. It feels weird to rate it.

It's kind of like this: My brother taught some English classes at some colleges, and he made a rule that in the beginning classes he didn't want anyone to write essays about two things: Marijuana legalization and personal rape stories. The first because he'd just read too many that covered the same ground. The second sounds a little cold-hearted, but I can get behind his reasoning. He said that it was impossible to grade them. Imagine someone pouring her heart out regarding a terrible personal violation, but looking at it honestly and finding that it was rife with grammatical errors and misspellings. Grading the story of someone's rape just seemed methodical and bizarre, and it made it very difficult for him to ever assign a bad grade, which in some cases may have been an honest grade.

That's kind of how I feel about this book. It's a good book, but it's so deeply personal that it's hard to grade it without feeling like I missed the point entirely.

To do a quick summary, the book starts off with the writer as a young man. He's driving, hits a girl who swerves in front of his car on her bike, and the girl dies. To make matters more complicated, the girl is a student at his high school.

What sets this book apart, to me, is that the author is so honest about everything. He's honest about some of the posturing he did right after the event because he was 17 and didn't really know how one would handle this sort of thing. He's honest about how he sabotaged some of his own relationships in life. He's really very honest about everything, and that's what makes the work book. You can tell he was ready to accept the things he had done and how he had handled it.

Things get a little strange when you start asking yourself why you're reading it. The thing is so personal it feels a little like something that you'd only hear from a close friend, and only after he just couldn't stay quiet about it anymore.

I'd like to think I didn't read it as a gawker, a rubbernecker on the roadside of the guy's life. I honestly don't think of myself as that kind of person.

I'd also like to think that I don't really get any pleasure or relief when reading about the misfortunes of others. It doesn't do a lot for me to watch someone else go through something bad and think, "At least I don't have it that bad."

Honestly, I think that I read it because it's almost like an It's a Wonderful Life kind of thing. We've all been there. Not as far down the road as the author went, but we've been on some kind of precipice. Mostly it comes and goes. You almost hit someone in a crosswalk, or maybe you take a fall and get up shocked that you can still stand under your own power, but we've all been to those places that make you say, "Holy shit. Someone could have died."

It's a good thing to find out what happens, in a way. In a very realistic way. It mostly confirms your worst fears, but like anything that reinforces fear, it's good to know that you're not alone in doing something that you regret or thinking about one life event changing everything afterwards, even if it wasn't your fault or if you don't really want things to be that way. Whether that life event be something this big or something much smaller, it's probably a really good message, especially for young men, to let people know that you might have feelings that you don't understand, don't know how to deal with, and really never go away.

The author himself, in the book, talks about how important the therapeutic act of writing something like this can be. There are proven effects, and a lot of it has to do with subject being able to hold the event in their hands. To have a stack of paper and say, Here it is. Here's that thing that kind of ruined my life. At least you feel some kind of power over it. That you can put it in a container, put some kind of a wall around it at least.

That's why it's so hard to rate this book. It seems like the author was successful on that count. He started the process of containing it, of putting it in a package that might lead to helping him understand everything better.

And it was a good read. He's a talented writer. I just feel strongly that there's no way to read this book without asking yourself why you're reading it and whether you should read it or not.

But how do you rate it? As a book? Or whether it accomplished what I would argue it's main purpose to be, organizing what could be a life-ruining event?

I guess maybe it's like a certain kind of pen. Let's say a Sharpie. I wouldn't want to write with one all the time. And there are a lot of applications where one COULD use it but I wouldn't advise it. However, when you come across a situation where you need a Sharpie, nothing works better.

This book is like that. If you need it, if you're in the right place for the book, it'll be great in it's own very tragic way. If you're not, you'll probably be disappointed and find it to be a completely inappropriate tool. ...more

If you've listened to Adam Carolla on the radio, you've probably heard about 90% of these stories before in some form or another. I guess what you'reIf you've listened to Adam Carolla on the radio, you've probably heard about 90% of these stories before in some form or another. I guess what you're paying for with the book is a more coherent collection that has some structure to it.

I listened to the audiobook, which was an interesting experience for a couple reasons.

1. Rather than reading his own book out loud, Carolla seems to get the beats of a story and then just retell it, which suits me just fine. I'm sure that's annoying to some people out there, but I think he himself would probably admit that his strength lies in talking more than it does in written prose, so why not play to your strengths?

2. After a couple chapters, he recorded short pieces with the people he'd written about. It was pretty cool, and it was a nice bonus to actually get the perspective of his friend Ray, who corroborated some of the stories about him, and to hear from Dr. Drew who told some stories that weren't included in the book.

3. There were parts where he actually laughed or said things in the narration that made me think he was enjoying doing the audiobook. That was refreshing.

4. At no point did he have illusions about what he was doing. So many audiobooks feel, to me, like they are performed like old time radio dramas. I mean, why does Tom Stechshulte have to read the title and then say, "Narrated by Tom Stechshulte"? He IS Tom Stechshulte, so it feels weird and formal. In this one, Adam kept referring to the fact that he was reading an audiobook, explaining the pictures you would be seeing if you actually had the book, and referring to how long he'd been in the studio recording the thing. It was fitting because it's memoir anyway, so why not add a little bit about recording the book while you're sitting in front of the mic?

I think what sold me on the audiobook originally was figuring that he's a radio guy, so a narrated version of this would make sense. But after listening to it, what I really enjoyed is that the change in format also caused a change in the material. Audio FELT like the right format for it, and I don't think that was an accident.

I'd like to see more audiobooks take this approach, adding and subtracting material or reading it in such a way that you really feel like reading it and listening to it are two different experiences, and that if they're going to take the time to record an audibook, they might as well make it something more than 8 hours of someone reading out loud....more

I didn't know what to expect from this one, a collection written and illustrated by a dude who was making his nut drawing pornographic comics, butWow.

I didn't know what to expect from this one, a collection written and illustrated by a dude who was making his nut drawing pornographic comics, but wow.

If you're into punky, Transmetropolitan-type stuff, this is a great read. It's creative, new, and almost every page has something new to offer, whether it be a zombie war in Korea or a cat that can duplicate a key by swallowing it.

With this kind of comic, I often worry that it will just come out like a bunch of nonsense, a bunch of cool ideas jammed into a tiny space. But King City holds it together. The supplementary material at the end of this volume isn't quite so coherent and really did a job showing me how this could have turned out in less careful hands.

The book has this great tone to it, and it captures boyhood in a way that reminded me of being a kid more than justGood. So good. Right up to the end.

The book has this great tone to it, and it captures boyhood in a way that reminded me of being a kid more than just about any other thing I can remember. There's a very strange thing that happens between brothers. You sort of love each other, but also sort of hate each other. And at times, you really can act like, as the book suggests, animals. As one of the early chapters says, there's never enough. Food or affection or daylight or anything. There isn't enough of anything, ever.

What the book really got at, in a way you don't see a lot, is what I've always thought of as the true nature of sibling relationships.

I think the cliche thing people say about family is something along the lines of "I beat the hell out of my brother. But if anyone else messed with him, I'd knock his block off." Or "his lights out." Or "him into next week." Honestly, though, that feels like revisionist history to me and a lazy attempt to capture how strange it is to be with these kids who you are told to love yet represent your main competition in a lot of ways. Each brother is his own country competing for resources. Each brother is his own army, alternately making alliances and being the victim of them. Each brother is his own boy, but he's also tied inexorably to these other boys without choice in the matter.

The writing is crisp, short, and does a great job of straddling the line between being a child narrator and an adult reminiscing, which makes it all feel so, so real.

The objection I have to the book is about the last 20 pages, when the narrator does a flash-forward of maybe ten years, is forced out of the closet after his family finds his journal, and describes his being put in some sort of psychiatric treatment. It's not that this was any sort of problem for me. And there's actually a poignant feeling of the bond between the three brothers dissolving, and this chain of events is definitely what makes this possible. But the rest of the book felt so slow, so small, so moment to moment that to leap forward and change the characters so much after we've been watching them grow up in pieces was less satisfying.

I don't want to say the ending ruined the book or anything like that. I really don't think that's possible. And honestly, it probably had less to do with the ending and more to do with the fact THAT it ended. It's a gorgeously written book, and just when I thought each of the short sections might be falling flat the wind would change direction and blow the dust off a beautiful, sometimes savage revelation. It worked for me in a big way.

I wonder if perhaps it was that I wasn't ready to leave that world just yet. Growing up, you're always ready to leave whatever age you are. When you're 15, you'd take a pill that made you 16 in a heartbeat. It's only later when you think how sometimes you'd like to be back there, how it felt safe. How punches and being "It" were a lot less scary than the stuff that happens when you're older.

So I wonder. I wonder if there are times when I want to go back there. And I wonder if maybe, reading this book, I wanted to walk away thinking the characters would never have to leave that place....more

"I'm awake and my father is dead. It's snowing and my father is dead. I'm hungry and my father is dead"

Whatever Michael Kimball chWow. Of course, wow.

"I'm awake and my father is dead. It's snowing and my father is dead. I'm hungry and my father is dead"

Whatever Michael Kimball chooses to explore, he does it right. He's an incredible writer and has a way of taking a story, boiling it down, and simplifying it without sacrificing any of the flavor.

His books have always stayed with me in a way that's difficult to describe. I tend to be short on memory for book plots and quotes, but I'm long on memory for how a book made me feel. By the time you finish this book, that feeling will be inescapable. Which is why it took me so long to read it. I knew that it would be like this.

I know it's hard to convince people to read a book that's a downer. This most certainly falls into that category. But it's a downer in the best possible way. I personally guarantee that you won't walk away feeling manipulated or like you were tricked into feeling a certain way. This isn't a book where we're having a great time until the dog dies. It makes no mistake about what it is, and you can read this excerpt and see if maybe you'd like it: http://www.vice.com/read/my-father-at...

My personal advice, however, is to get it and read it cover to cover. It's so much more than the sum of its beautiful, tragic, awe-inspiring parts.

"I tie my shoes in the morning and my dad is dead. It's lunchtime and my dad is dead. I get the mail and my dad is dead. It's sunny outside and my dad is dead. I'm happy right now and my dad is dead."

Yes, I finally experienced the Princess Bride, both in book and in film.

The movie is one of those that you have to see if for no other reason than toYes, I finally experienced the Princess Bride, both in book and in film.

The movie is one of those that you have to see if for no other reason than to stop people's incredulity when you explain that you haven't. There are plenty of other reasons to watch it, but good god, there aren't many statements that bring forth as much shock and awe as "Princess Bride? Never seen it."

Some statements that bring forth equivalent surprise:

"I've never been in a ball pit."

"I've never see precipitation of any kind."

"I've never seen the Goonies/the Breakfast Club/the Karate Kid." (these I know from experience to be on about the same level)

I'm guilty of doing the same thing, though. When a friend recently told me she'd never seen Back to the Future, ANY of them, I said, "Really? None of them?"

It's a nice way to communicate with someone, restating everything in question form.

"That'll be $4.95."

"Really? $4.95? In money? American money?"

The book is really good, though. It has a surprising element that’s mostly absent in the movie, which is the author writing short asides explaining how he edited the original text and why. Great stuff, really funny. I can see why it’s so popular amongst adults. It’s got that vibe to it, maybe the closest equivalent being a Pixar movie, where you feel like it’s for kids, but also that we’re being tricked into thinking it’s for kids when really it’s more for adults in a lot of ways. As if they’re somehow made to make us feel nostalgia for the movies of childhood, but to feel the nostalgia when seeing something brand new and for the first time, as adults. It’s very tricky.

One more thing: if a friend tells you that a book is a favorite, or a movie, or a song, it’s probably worth your time to see what the fuss is about. Seriously. That’s how I ended up reading a long form fairy tale in between a book about cage fighters and a book about a bomb tech. The beauty of reading a friend favorite is that even if you’re not all that into the book, you’ll still understand something new about your friend. So if it drags in sections or if it takes a little longer to convince you of its value, you’ve got more reason to read it.Everybody has plenty of stuff on the to-read list. But if you’ve got a little time, try reading something that a friend or a loved one would claim as a favorite. It’s time well spent....more

When I deployed for the first time [my wife] asked her grandmother for advice. Her grandfather served in Africa and Europe in World War II. HeExcerpt:

When I deployed for the first time [my wife] asked her grandmother for advice. Her grandfather served in Africa and Europe in World War II. Her grandmother would know what to do.

"How do I live with him being gone? How do I help him when he comes home?" my wife asked.

"He won't come home," her grandmother answered. "The war will kill him one way or the other. I hope for you that he dies while he is there. Otherwise the war will kill him at home. With you."

The story of Brian Castner's Crazy is trim, sad, and a must-read.

What makes this book so different from the other books about the Iraq war?

1. There are no real politics. You can certainly superimpose your own politics on it if you want, as is the case with goddamn EVERYTHING, but the book itself goes a different way. It's highly personal, focusing on the side of things that you don't see so much. The writer talks about what he knows and what he experienced, and he leaves the rest alone.

2. He does a good job making you understand his Crazy. A lot of books about people who are crazy try to make you experience crazy for yourself, see the world as they see it. So they use weird line breaks, broken sentences, bizarre wordplay and other tricks to try and take you somewhere you can't go because, well, you're not crazy. What Castner does is explain what he is thinking about when he's feeling crazy. How it changes him.

3. This is not, like so many other books about people with problems, about redemption. Yes, there is a brief moment when he seems to overcome his crazy, just for a second. But it comes back, of course. And the odds against him are insurmountable. After he describes panicking in an airport and mentally planning who to shoot first and where to go in order to escape, it's hard to imagine that he'll ever be all the way better. After he explains just a touch of the physics behind explosions and why they can destroy a brain without destroying the body around it, it's hard to think that he's ever going to be the way he was before. After he says that his wife wants him to cheat on her just so that she could leave him, you kind of give up on the idea of him having a normal life.

So, in a genre that involves a lot of dates, tactical information, and insider knowledge, someone has written a book that is deeply personal and brave in revealing that something inside someone who made a career out of being tough and mentally calm, that something inside that person has been fundamentally and irrevocably broken. More than that, it does a great job of connecting the past with the present and making a reader understand the problem: there's really IS no difference.

I had a really great poetry teacher in school. Funny. Smart. Great bullshit detector. Seriously, almost frighteningly attuned to suss out if you wereI had a really great poetry teacher in school. Funny. Smart. Great bullshit detector. Seriously, almost frighteningly attuned to suss out if you were full of it.

One of our assignments was a poetry portfolio, one where we were to collect a couple dozen poems we loved, then supplement them with a few of our own.

It was easily one of the most difficult assignments I'd ever done.

The thing is, filling the binder with a couple dozen poets was easy. Philip Levine, Denver Butson, Donald Hall. And Raymond Carver. Because there always has to be Raymond Carver.

In the portfolio she wrote notes on some things. Not everything. Just a few. On the Donald Hall, she wrote, I like him, but I miss Jane Kenyon. On one of mine, she wrote something about how it sounded like something written by someone much older.

On the Raymond Carver, she wrote only, "Oh, Ray..."

Because what else can you say?

The thing that made the assignment so impossible was being a student and putting your own words next to someone like a Raymond Carver. Who has it in them to think they deserve to be right there next to Raymond Carver, a man whose power is such that when confronted with him, a woman of many incredible words can only say, "Oh, Ray..."?

Reviewing books is the same way. How do you talk about something really beautiful without tarnishing a little bit about what makes it so gorgeous?

Stay Here With Me is gorgeous, and it's unforgiving in being so damn pretty.

It's a great read if you're the kind of person who rereads sentences. Like this one:

There are few kid's books out there that I find legitimately funny. A lot of cute ones, sure. A lot that make me say, "Oh, that's funny." But not thatThere are few kid's books out there that I find legitimately funny. A lot of cute ones, sure. A lot that make me say, "Oh, that's funny." But not that many that make me actually laugh. Seriously, chuckling to myself on an outdoor patio.

It made me laugh, and when I read the first few pages to a group of 5th graders, they laughed too. Granted, I have the emotional range of a 5th grader, so it's not a perfect test, but I think it still says SOMETHING.

If you're reading chapter books out loud to your kid, or just A kid, I guess. I mean, I'm not going to tell you how to live your life. Probably not the best idea to go around reading books aloud to strange children, but that's just my opinion. If you ARE reading aloud, though, this is the perfect book. Just try not to make J.Lo's voice TOO hilarious. It's quite the performance to keep up....more

In a sea of zombie fiction, this one does a good job of standing out from the crowd a little.

For one thing, it's done in sort of a POV format, so as tIn a sea of zombie fiction, this one does a good job of standing out from the crowd a little.

For one thing, it's done in sort of a POV format, so as the reader the characters in the book are talking to you directly. Not an easy thing to pull off without having the one-way dialogue seem awkward or putting in a pair of hands or something.

With the exception of video games, I can't really think of a lot of situations that use this method successfully. Well, or course, except for the motion picture Doom.

Also, the book has a pretty good, sympathetic main character that I cared about more than...let's say 2/3 the cast of Walking Dead television series....more

The first volume feels kind of skippable, but the second picks up the pace and really gets the story going.

You know what I really like about this bookThe first volume feels kind of skippable, but the second picks up the pace and really gets the story going.

You know what I really like about this book? It has a great sense of the weird. Not weird in the Jim Woodring, I am seeing images without knowing what's going on kind of way. It's fun weird. Weird in the way where you can really EMBRACE the weird.

I only have nice, mushy things to say about this book. I know, that's not as fun to read. But what can I say? It was great.

You pull for the charactersI only have nice, mushy things to say about this book. I know, that's not as fun to read. But what can I say? It was great.

You pull for the characters, you chastise them in your mind when they make bad choices. They become real in the way that only characters can.

The only bad thing I have to say about this book is that there are a few barriers to picking it up right off. Please allow me to address two.

It Is a Book About Baseball

Yeah, I know. It's about baseball. Sort of. But sort of not. Maybe more sort of not than sort of.

Let me allay any minor fears you have by pointing out that I don't give one hot damn about baseball. Seriously. I stopped caring about baseball the day I gave up on my baseball collection, which was right about the time I got a card that featured a shirtless Kirby Puckett. Why someone would take that photograph is completely beyond me, but that's the world we're in, I guess.

More to the point, I think that it's a true test of a writer to make you care about something that you didn't care about before, and maybe will never care about again. I've read a lot of books relating to subjects that I care about, and most of the time my care for the subject isn't going to turn a bad book into a good one. Usually it's the opposite, reading with frustration while someone handles something dear to my heart with less care than he or she should.

All I'm saying is, if baseball is what's keeping you away from this book, give it a shot. It's a silly reason not to read the book anyone. How many of you have competed in a fight to the death against several teenagers in order to determine whose hometown will get enough food for the next year or so? Oh, none of you? Yet you still read and enjoyed the Hunger Games? Alright then. So maybe there's room in your heart to enjoy a baseball book too.

It's So Long!

It is long. That's true.

I tend to shy away from stuff that's too long. Ask anyone I've gone to the movies with.I can barely make it to the parking lot without complaining that they could have cut 40 minutes, usually involving a ballroom dance sequence or something to do with an estranged relative. Long drives turn me into a child, hitting the back seat and whining about being out of Slim Jims. Sex? Sex could be a little shorter, in general. Maybe?

Just putting out the message that I'm sensitive to overly lengthy stuff, anything that feels padded out. This one, even though it's just this side of hefty, is tight, my friends. And it's a fast read. Not a fast read as in you can skip whole sections. A fast read as in the prose is so strong that it's more like opening a page and listening than doing the work yourself.

Give it a read. It's the kind of book that you want to buy for people so that you can put it in their hands and make them feel obligated to read. It's THAT kind of book.

Like any book, it won't be for everyone. But it deserves a chance from everyone. A once-over.

I could go on, but I won't. Hopefully anyone who was considering reading this book will. And hopefully someone who had no intention of doing so will give it a shot.

Most hopefully, I really really hope that this didn't change anyone from considering reading it to saying absolutely not. If so, I apologize deeply and should let you know that Mr. Harbach is a lot better at this typing business than I am.

For example, near the end of the book, one character nails it. Exactly what makes a great book a great book. I'll close with that because it's daunting to think of as nice a conclusion myself.

"I read your book when I was fourteen, and it bolstered my courage at a moment when my courage was required."...more

I read a rumor somewhere that Mark Spragg was unhappy with one of his novels. I don’t know whether that was the one that followed this, An UnfinishedI read a rumor somewhere that Mark Spragg was unhappy with one of his novels. I don’t know whether that was the one that followed this, An Unfinished Life, but I have my suspicions.

I wish I could remember where I saw that little bit of information, but it’s gone now. It could, in fact, be a complete lie and more just a highlight of how I felt.

After taking a run at An Unfinished Life, I set Mark Spragg down. It’s compared to Plainsong and some of Cormac McCarthy’s stuff, but it just didn’t do a whole lot for me. With this book, though, the comparison works for me a little better.

What I’m trying to say is, if you gave Mark Spragg a shot before and didn’t get into him, I’d say give this one a go. It worked for me. The writing was tighter, and the stories were incredible, whether it’s the story of the toughest kid in town or how young love is sometimes expressed by an iceball to the face or, in the first and one of the best pieces, about riding a sick horse nearly to death and fearing that “careless boys grow into careless men.”...more